


Half-Life: Divergent Paths

by Checkerbox



Category: Half-Life
Genre: A sort of cobbling together of the story elements in the game's conceptual phase, Alternate Universe-Beta Half-Life, Captain Vance, Eli Maxwell, Gen, Half-Life 2, Helena Mossman, some violence but nothing graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6885367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Checkerbox/pseuds/Checkerbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shots in an AU based on the Half-Life 2 Beta</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Point Insertion

**Author's Note:**

> Re-post of a fic collection I'd written a while back on FFN. I'm not as firmly in the Half-Life fandom as I used to be, and so have lost much of my fanfic motivation for it, but I still rather like the exploration of ideas in this.
> 
> Won't be adding any more but will be revising what I post here.

This had to be some fever dream. Maybe he died fighting the Nihilanth and everything afterwards had been a desperate hallucination of escape. A man in a grey suit with stilted, slurred speech plucking him out of reality right before his death? It was too surreal. It wasn't true.

…Gordon sucked in the stale air of the train car and had to accept that this was real.

He felt...disoriented, like he'd been asleep for a while and woke up in someone else's world. Except he'd just been _in_ someone else's world. Some **thing** else's. This was supposed to be **his** world, wasn't it? But it wasn't.

He swallowed and attempted to quell the onset of panic when he discovered that, instead of his protective hazard suit, he was garbed in plain denim clothes that provided no security whatsoever. All of his weapons were missing—even his crowbar. He was completely defenseless. Wasn't he told that he could at least keep the suit?

The cold metal floor shook and brought him into the moment. It was in a small train car that the...man, or whatever he was, had placed him, two other human figures farther in, one staring dismally out the window and the other nervously clutching a scuffed black briefcase. They were also wearing the denim overalls—perhaps it was some sort of institutional apparel. The scenery outside was dark and cloudy, the lightbulbs overhead dim and flickering. Such low light had masked his entrance—or maybe the two men believed he had always been on the train.

…Had he?

Cautiously, he rose to his feet, gripping a seat to steady himself as the car shook again. Wherever this was, it was certainly not Black Mesa. Perhaps there was some comfort in that. He carefully made his way forward, eyes beginning to dart about for any threat that might approach. The words of the gray faced stranger were already fading from his mind—words that might've given him something to expect; he tried to hold on to what he knew and failed. There was only the now.

"I didn't see you get on," one of his fellow passengers mused, voice serene in a broken kind of way. Devoid of interest. Gordon kept quiet, and the man's low-lidded, apathetic gaze turned back to the window.

It was hard not to stumble around like a stupefied tourist the moment he was able to step off the train. Things must have changed a lot while he was…wherever he had been. The thick, dark clouds across the sky, the imposingly tall architecture—that tower in the center of town, he couldn't even see the top. It didn't look like anything human, either…

If he hadn't been in so much shock, Gordon might have noticed that he was the only one milling around. Other citizens strode away from the station in hurried, nervous paces. The only people actually standing in place were figures in dark trench coats with ghoulish gas masks on their faces ("Civil Protection", sprung to mind as the identifying label, but no source provided itself in his memory). What were they there for? To keep people in line? They weren't there to observe—there were plenty of cameras, both stationary and floating through the air, emitting soft beeps as they took pictures of the various people the train dropped off, like little sentry drones.

What a curious flight path they took. The scientist in Gordon that had been dormant for the last two days sat up and wondered how they managed to stay afloat like that, bobbing about almost aimlessly. One came in close to his face…

In precisely half of one second he was blind from the flash, listening to three clicks as it started taking his picture. He stumbled back, struggling to regain his vision, panicking. When things began to clear a little, a hand had grabbed his collar and wrenched him back.

"Ah!" Still stunned, Gordon found himself windmilling a little to keep steady. It was much darker now—he'd been dragged inside one of the battered looking buildings just before the exit of the train station processing.

" **Quiet**." He hadn't been here long, but he recognized the distorted, hostile bark of the various officers around the station. He went silent. He liked to think it was less obedience for authoritarian figures and more because it was what he naturally tended to do, anyway.

The CP glanced around in the street for a second with his gloves braced against the frame of the doorway, almost like he wanted to make sure they were unobserved.

Gordon started to get a sinking feeling that he was going to have to start killing again. Damn. He glanced around the room for any blunt objects that he might be able to use. Conditions weren't ideal, but maybe he could snatch something off that belt of weapons that was visible from this vantage point...

" **Alright.** " The officer slammed the door shut, leaving only one bare, flickering bulb to light the room, and brought a hand up to his mask. Gordon stepped back. He wasn't ready—there weren't a whole lot of usable items in this room, and if it came to using his fists he was sure to lose. Maybe he could—

Oh.

Barney.

_Holy crap_. "Barney?"

His dark hair was greying and there were lines on his face that hadn't been there before, but it was the same guard from Black Mesa he'd met when things went to hell.

"Well, you took your sweet time getting here, didn't you?" Barney spoke in the same voice with which one might greet a colleague heading into work, looking over his mask before setting it down. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

All the questions buzzing through Gordon's head choked his throat, and the most he could manage was some confused gibbering. Barney cocked an eyebrow and laughed. "Still a master communicator, eh Doc? Listen, save your questions for Kleiner, I'm just the security checkpoint. You have to get down to the lab before anyone with any brain cells to rub together catches on to who you are now that you've gone and _gotten your picture taken_."

Gordon frowned. His brain was only processing half of this. The name "Kleiner" stuck with him—his mentor at MIT and superior in Black Mesa. Everything else was too confusing to process, no context for any of it in his mind. He was in danger, though—that was clear. He hadn't exactly been out of danger for the past two days, so it didn't really phase him too much. He could handle a hornet's nest if he had to, it just sucked to always be stumbling into them.

"You getting' any of this, Doc?"

Gordon looked up and nodded before realizing the answer to that question was no. Barney didn't notice, maintaining his grim expression and glancing once more outside the doors.

"Alright, Kleiner's lab is through the manhack arcade—you'll recognize it, a bunch of people lined up to play this sick game the Combine set up. Take a left through the nearby foundry, keep going straight—and try to look like you belong there. Once you're out there'll be a parking structure, go down to the third level and—" Harsh banging on the other side of the door. "Aw, for the love of—We've got company coming, I'll try to meet you there."

"What?"

Barney fiddled with his mask, getting it back over his face. "Someone must've seen me drag you in and now they want to see what's up. Just play along, Gordon."

" _What?_ "

Barney strode towards him as the sound of footsteps could be heard outside. " **Shut up for a second**."

Hm. That was first time anyone actually had to say that to him. Paradoxically that was when the words finally made their out of him. "Barney you can't just send me off without telling me what this is all ab--"

Barney socked him straight in the stomach.

Every molecule of air went wheezing out of Gordon's lungs, sending him collapsing in on himself down to the floor. He had received _bullet wounds_ that hurt less. At that moment sprawled out on the floor he felt like a sack of potatoes.

Light poured in, the dim and foggy kind, blocked by the shadows of two figures--probably in CP attire judging by their boots.

" **Need some help?** " one asked, pulling a baton-like weapon from his belt and making it spark.

" **Nah, I'm good.** " Barney said, sending a swift kick to Gordon's side for good measure. World spinning, the hapless scientist just wanted to ask if Barney had gone _completely insane_. But that might make him mad. " **Just wanted to let 'im know what he was in for.** "

" **They're always so arrogant when they get off the trains.** " The third one sneered.

" **Exactly. Give me a hand here.** " Dizzy and trying to get his senses back, Gordon felt them hoist him to his feet, throwing the doors wide open. They tossed him forward into the cold, dead air. This time he managed to keep from kissing the pavement, fighting off the vertigo and steadying himself. He glanced back at his tormentors as he dizzily stumbled away, unable to tell under the ghoulish masks which one was his friend.

" **Welcome to City 17.** "


	2. The Lab

At one point in time it must have been a parking structure, most of the upper levels having already broken away, crumbling under the weight of the invasion. --So Alyx Vance told herself as she walked within it.

Below sea level—or at least, it was before the sea level dropped—the darkness and deserted concrete convinced patrolling Combine forces it wasn't worth investigation. They had more pressing issues to take care of. More precious resources to steal. She could walk freely here, her luminescent friend Skitch on her heels, and remember when she was younger and her father would visit the lab to see her. She loved the darkness, the quietness, the knowledge of family a few buttons and coin slots away.

This wasn't a social visit, though. She breathed in the musty air and hurried on her way.

Skitch skittered around the walls on her backwards legs, baring her teeth and checking for any watchers. Alyx had already disabled the few cameras scattered about the perimeter. Not permanently of course—that would just look suspicious. No, she had to be careful, make it look like the work of a dust storm—And those were common enough, as it was. Taking one more precautionary glance over her shoulder, she approached an old vending machine with a beat-up soda logo on it-before the time of The Administrator's Reserve--punched in a nonsensical coding of soft drinks and popped in 25 cents. There was a click, a soft hiss, and the machine opened for her. She turned her head and whistled for Skitch, who scrabbled ahead and slipped through.

"How the hell am I supposed to know what that looks like?" Alyx heard from inside. Barney. It figured they were still working. From what she could see, they hadn't even fully sorted through the equipment dump from last week, and the place was crowded with miscellaneous cords and scrap. Most of it looked like junk, but where exactly were they supposed to dispose of it at?

"For heaven's sake, Barney! It's like a Resonance Plug, but wider with red wires out the end!"

" _Gee_ thanks Doc, that really narrows it—AAGH!" Alyx rushed through the clutter to see a man with salt and pepper hair in a dark Civil Protection trench coat climbing up a pile of machine parts and kicking at Skitch. "Goddammit Alyx, can't you knock before letting that thing in?!"

"Sorry Barney," Alyx laughed, although at the same time feeling just a little guilty, and waved her back, "C'mon Skitch, he gets enough trouble from Lamarr."

Skitch snapped at his boots once more with her hypodermic teeth before obediently falling behind her master. After a moment, still staring at her warily, Barney returned to floor level.

"Barney what are you doing over there? Quit fooling around and find me the converter!" She heard Kleiner yell from the other end of the lab.

" _Foolin' around_?" Barney sputtered and clenched his fists. " _You_ _over bloated_ —"

"Hi there Dr. Kleiner!" Alyx called in the man's general direction before her friend said something he might regret later, waving a little and glancing around at the scattered equipment.

"What? …Oh, Alyx, is that you?" Kleiner's voice at once changed from irritation to delight. "Hello there, my dear! I'm in the middle of some calculations, so I'm afraid I can't come over there." There was a pause on his end, and his voice resumed the frustrated tone. "Speaking of which-!"

" _Hold your horses_ , Doc! I'm lookin', I'm lookin'!" Barney started muttering under his breath and sifting through the piles of scrap again. "I swear, it's just like working at Black Mesa. 'Barney, I locked myself out of my office again', 'Calhoun, some _MIT graduate_ broke his security pass and needs a new one'. Only I don't get to go home at the end of the damn day." He growled under his breath and turned around to give Alyx a very exasperated look. "…You come over here for something?"

She nodded, frowning a bit in sympathy. "Eli's teleporter's still in the conceptual stage and I said I would help him out. I need to get a few spare parts, if you have any."

He grinned. "You sure you're not here for another bucket of red hair dye? That stuff doesn't come cheap, you know." He tapped his temple and pointed to her wild, flaming red hair. "I'm only asking because your roots are showing."

"So are yours."

He scowled and inclined his head to where their own teleporter was being made. "Kleiner should know where the important stuff is. Unless he needs _me_ to find it, which is what's been going on all day. Then you're out of luck."

Alyx nodded and started to maneuver around everything taking up space in the floor, carefully making her way over. The lab didn't usually look so much like a junkyard. If she used her imagination she could recognize the security consoles she had hacked the cameras through once, the HEV repair system, and maybe even the floor tiles under the dim lights and scrap.

The area around the teleporter, which looked like a large, steel can with a slot in the front to see through, was surprisingly clear. Kleiner was writing on a weathered clipboard, frown lines creasing his aged face. He seemed to have lost more of his thin, grey hair since she'd last seen him.

"Hey, Dr. Kleiner, you got a sec?" Alyx asked, stepping carefully down next to him.

"In a second, Alyx," he said, waving her off and adjusting his glasses. "I have an idea and I need to write it down or else I'll lose it complete—oh fie. _Where is Barney with the converter_?!"

"He's looking, Doc. Maybe you should cut him some slack, I'm sure things are pretty stressful for him right now."

Kleiner just shook his head. "Things are stressful for _all_ of us, all of the time."

"It's honestly more for your health than his."

He sighed. "Very well. I just—I swear it's just like working at Black Mesa. Honestly, do you know how long he would take getting my office open whenever I locked myself out? I couldn't get any work done!"

"If you say so." She glanced back. Barney had just tossed a piece of machinery across the room. "Listen, I need a component or two so Dr. Maxwell can get working on his teleporter…"

"Ah, is it the spectral analysis table? He was asking about it earlier, I dug one out just in case. It should be on the table over there." Kleiner, already back to his notes, gave a vague, distracted wave over in the general direction of the left wall. Alyx gave it a good once over and stared at Kleiner.

"Uh…What table?"

"What? Why, the one over…" Kleiner paused. "Right. I keep forgetting we have yet to clear the mess. It's under the rubble somewhere. I'll get Barney on that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I must note that I don't science nearly enough to have convincing jargon.


	3. Eli's Place

The night out in the wasteland was bizarrely peaceful, in its own way.

Small dust storms blew across the brown, cracked earth and whistled through its passages. Antlions skittered away in the distance, chittering and digging their mile long underground nests. Searching, crooning Combine synths swung low over the terrain, waving spotlights along the ground for anything out of the ordinary; any remaining rogue military facilities, unaccounted for Xen wildlife, or even a ragtag guerrilla group of subjugated humans prowling the remains of what had once been their countryside.

Now, the gaudily painted junkyard monstrosity that had the name "D0G" spray-painted in bright yellow along the back of its chassis did not look like any of these things—except, perhaps, a mechanical version of the homophone "gorilla". But nonetheless, it ducked out of the light when the mechanized creature came its way, and only returned to its delivery functions when the sky was clear again.

D0G was, much like its master, not much to look at. At a glance, it seemed like both of them were falling apart at the seams, perhaps composed of parts too worn down, or maybe not even constructed properly from the very beginning. It was not unusual to dismiss either out of hand, or balk at introductions and instead focus on those that bothered to make themselves more presentable (or at least, as presentable as one could get in the last decade or so). Being ignored was, in fact, a fundamental aspect of the two's existence.

They were also alike in that they were very good at what they did, whether it had to do with making advanced equipment with old trash or tearing apart Combine soldiers, and that overlooking them because of superficial features such as asymmetrical design, a scruffy, unwashed appearance and a questionable aesthetic was not only shallow but also fairly stupid to boot.

But Eli Maxwell didn't mind, and D0G didn't even have the capacity to care. If the doctor overly concerned himself with the opinions or companionship of his colleagues, it certainly wasn't reflected in his choice of lab location, set out in a hovel in the outskirts of City 17 where only those on the run dared to go.

It did concern him, however, that there hadn't been many refugees led his way in a while.

No matter.

At the moment he was waiting for D0G to return from its scavenging with the supplies he needed to begin work on the teleporter. He'd hit a roadblock in several other projects for similar reasons, such as the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator, and was very eager to resume productivity. After all, the last time Calhoun dropped by he'd mentioned that Kleiner had already begun construction on his own "resurrected teleport". Having a quick, unnoticeable transfer systems for refugees would be a great boon to liberation efforts.

And no, he didn't need Captain Vance to tell him that.

D0G often took a long time to look for what he needed, and so Eli found many of his hours alone. Sometimes he would spend the hours looking at the outside world through the sole window in his little hole in the ground, searching for various signs of life amidst an otherwise dead world. Sometimes he would prep little introductory slide shows for liberated peoples who might not have been fully apprised of the Earth's situation. Unsurprisingly, information suppression and brain-washing was a common theme among the yet-captured.

This time, he sat and stared at the damaged, weather beaten photo of his wife he'd salvaged from Black Mesa, thinking and occasionally running a hand through his thick, greying beard. His leg had been giving him trouble again. That, and he'd been getting too old.

There had been so much, before the accident. So many things in their future, so many discoveries to be made. She'd even broached the topic of raising a family together. Now, he lived in a hole in the ground with nothing but memories and resistance work.

Thuds reverberated through the roof over his head, and he sat up straight. The briefest course of panic shot through his system before the careful knocking pattern echoed on the metal entrance gate, and was swallowed by relief. D0G was back.

He reached for his cane, managing with great effort to get to his feet and hobble over to the makeshift garage door opener he'd fashioned for himself. The old machinery groaned and protested, but eventually the way was open.

"Well don't just stand there, boy—we don't want to draw eyes, do we?" The automaton nodded its three piece head and shuffled back a little while he opened the entrance for it.

D0G, having only one, large red eye to see through, as usual overshot its target. Instead of just making its way over all of the equipment in the lab, it collided with the makeshift lounge area, hitting a radio set and crashing into a couch made almost entirely with duct tape.

The radio was smashed to pieces. The couch was, of course, completely undamaged.

" _D0G._ " Eli limped over, feeling the plastic prosthetic under his right knee creak under the strain of his weight as he walked and pulling up his goggles to inspect the mess. "What did I tell you about being careful in the house?"

D0G made a low, defensive whoop as it righted itself, hanging its head like it used to back when the body was only about knee-high and it looked more like a standard canine form. It shook its back and shifted so that the bag full of components was in easy reaching distance, bearing it like a peace offering. Eli laughed. He leaned over and slipped the bag off of D0G's frame, taking a minute to glance at the contents before setting it down in the general lab space. The radio he could fix later.

"Come sit with me, D0G," he said, "I feel like an old man today." He hobbled to the couch as the robot tilted the duct taped mess back into a sitting angle, running a hand over the scanner scrap head as he passed. D0G didn't really get the finer points of human nostalgia and mourning, but nonetheless it obediently took a place at Eli's side, sitting on the floor by his feet and examining the cracks in the cave ground. He thought about work and family and what, precisely, he was going to complete by tomorrow morning.

An insistent beeping broke his reverie, and he glanced over to see that a call was coming in. Most likely, it was Barney announcing that they were sending another escaped citizen his way. It gave him some degree of surprise, then, that when D0G went to adjust the antenna so a picture could come through he instead saw the golden, bobbed hairstyle and sharply featured face of Helena Mossman staring back at him.

"Dr. Mossman!" He got up from where he was sitting and moved in view of his camera. "This is, well, unexpected."

"Dr. Maxwell. Figured I'd check in." Her voice, already somewhat cold, was amplified by the way his speakers played the receiving sound, so that it felt somewhat more like he was conversing with a particularly human robot rather than a coworker. "Dr. Kleiner just sent me some specs covering his progress on his in-city resurrected teleport, and since I—we—have just finished running some preliminary tests on our own over at Kraken base, I thought I'd ask about how you're coming along."

"Oh, really? Well, that was sweet of you," he teased, watching her frown and purse her lips in response. "I've had some trouble with equipment, so things are slow, but they could be worse."

"…Yes, I imagined you might have some difficulty, what with the conditions of your…lab." Interestingly, she seemed to be making an effort to mask the disapproval in her voice for Eli's living conditions, before clearing her throat. "I could always send someone out there, for supplies."

"Oh no, no, that won't be necessary. I sent D0G out for what I needed. I'm sure I have much to do, but I have enough to get started."

Her eyebrows creased in a disapproving manner all too familiar to anyone that had to work with her. "If you have the parts, I would expect you to start progressing immediately. The chain's not going to be ready to use if we're missing a link, yes?"

"Oh, I'll get to it. Just feeling a bit lazy and sentimental right now, you know?"

Mossman started to speak, paused, and then rather than continue to berate him for his sense of humor her tone softened somewhat and lost the edge of imperiousness. "…You don't have to stay out there alone, you know."

Eli forced a laugh. She always had this tendency to go off topic with him. "I'm not alone. I've got D0G with me."

"Machines don't count." D0G made an offended intonation and she rolled her eyes. "When's the last time you've actually talked to somebody in person?"

"I'm _fine._ " He waved away her concerns, shaking his head. "You don't need me over at Kraken labs; I'd only get in the way. Besides, _someone_ has to hold this position, and since I'm already here it may as well be me."

She sighed, and he could tell he was getting her frustrated. "Look, just…If you ever change your mind—"

"I'll call you." Eli leaned over and flicked the communications power switch. "Goodbye, Helena."

The silence encompassed the room as D0G shifted out of position at the antenna. The lights were low because of the power draw that the video array had created, and didn't return to full brightness for a few minutes more.

He always knew when he was in too depressed a mood when other people miles away could rightfully call him out on it. That was just one of the pitfalls of spending long hours with no human contact prepping machinery and running algorithms. The same thing had happened in Black Mesa, back when the facility wasn't just a crater in New Mexico. The best remedy that he'd found was work—but that only seemed to exacerbate the problem in his off hours.

It seemed an odd thing to think about with the state of the world taken into account. Nonetheless, Helena had a point. It wouldn't do much good to sit around, moping. Besides…

Kleiner would never let him hear the end of it if he got his teleporter working first.

Eli grinned, pulled on a pair of goggles, and got started.


	4. Antlions and Alyx

A sharp, screeching hiss broke through the silence of the glowing grub lit subterranean tunnels. Gordon jerked, spun around and ended up blasting a hole in the antlion trailing behind him with his shotgun, yellow bug guts splashing over the ground.

He cringed and gritted his teeth, trying to get his hands to stop shaking. They were dead still anytime he needed to use them in a pinch, but once a twitchy trigger finger was a detriment to how well he could function in a situation, he was all nerves. His ears were still ringing from the last two shots. Grumbling to himself, he pulled the squishy, spherical sac from his makeshift belt and gave it a quick squeeze.

Nothing for a minute, then another hiss and Gordon ended up with a second batch of gore on the walls.

"Goddammit."

He made sure to set the shotgun on the ground before calling in more reinforcements. When the antlion arrived, he still managed to reflexively whack it with his crowbar and flinch back, but the dumb thing just stood there and looked up at him expectantly, the area directly left of its eye dented and one antenna slightly crooked.

It should have saddened him somewhat that destruction was his first response when confronted with something strange and alien. As a scientist he'd always identified with the poor sap in cheap sci fi films that wanted to keep the creature alive and study it, maybe try to learn its language or understand where it came from. Now the reality was that his survival instincts had turned him into a killing machine. And most of him was actually perfectly fine with that, too, because it kept him alive and it kept his priorities in order. Generally his transformation into a fauna leveler was only a pain if it led to being laughed at by Alyx Vance.

When they'd first met out in the Wasteland she'd seemed so…awed, to see him. Just like everyone else he'd encountered since touching down in this Orwellian apocalypse. Gordon hadn't given it another thought, only focusing on the task at hand and giving her the briefest of acknowledging nods for her help. After they were separated in Traptown he hadn't expected to see her again, now used to most of the people he met dying after their introductions, after he'd gotten used to them following behind him. But at the end of the line, there she'd been, covered in blood and scrapes with more ammo than he'd managed to reserve and a welcoming grin on her face.

Then he'd been a little awed to see her too.

A list had started forming in his mind of all the people he felt comfortable believing in since the accident, a short, highly exclusive one, and she'd made her way on there without even trying.

So it damaged his pride a bit when she made fun of him back at the checkpoint for throwing tactics out the window and barreling through hordes of antlions to get there. Evidently, subtlety and manipulation was the common strategy for these creatures, and she'd laughed, handing him the pheromone control pod and snickering when he stared at it in his palm cluelessly. He'd dealt with a lot of alien weapons of warfare that could be used by human beings at Black Mesa—but it wasn't like he'd majored in xenobiology and could understand these things by sight.

According to her he liked doing things the hard way. It was more that nobody had told him there was an easier one to begin with.

After a moment he glanced back at his chittering, damaged companion. Maybe it was everyone else that did things the hard way.

After all, it was easier to burn hornet nests than avoid them if they were _everywhere._

The tunnel widened into acid carved caverns, and he gripped his gun protectively. The engineer antlions were controlled by a different set of chemicals than the pheromone pod he currently held, and he didn't feel like having his head melt off just yet. He could hear them skittering with their thin, hard legs somewhere nearby, and crouched by the wall, listening.

There were two, maybe more. He didn't like his odds then. One was manageable—as long as he made sure its spit hit his suit, and not his sadly unprotected face, then no real damage would be done. But a second could fire while he was distracted, and the over spill might be too much.

Without a second thought, he peeled off a piece of the pheromone pod and lobbed it over the wall at the working insectoids, sending his follower off in a frenzy. While the smooth white monsters grappled with their speckled, fragmented brother, Gordon sprinted for an adjacent tunnel where he could continue out of range. He went unnoticed over the hissing, spitting, and finally, crunching, that echoed off the walls.

Sacrificial lion, as it were.

Oh, perhaps there was _some_ benefit to thinking in a combat situation. At least his fear had numbed enough to make it possible. A part of him wondered if Alyx ever felt that kind of terror, that ate away at your mind and stomach while the world was falling down around you. ...It didn't seem like it. She planned ahead, smiled far too often, laughed too much.

Two more big bugs burrowed in behind him like obedient attack dogs. He gave them a passing glare after just barely putting the shotgun down and continued on.

If he had to be precise, he hadn't quite come to an opinion on her yet. She was inscrutable, like most human beings. Easily impressed but prone to making fun of him, cheerful but grim when she thought he wasn't looking, competent and experienced but deferring to his abilities whenever possible, talkative but always on topics that deflected attention specifically away from herself. She had buffed piercings in her left eyebrow and dyed red hair and a coat so patched with tape that you couldn't tell it had originally been lined with faux-fur. She'd made a joke about about particle storms that almost made him laugh out in the Wastes and even let him have a go at the Gravity Gun when Dr. Maxwell offered it up for her to take along.

Ah, well. Opinion formed, then. Gordon liked Alyx.

Now he just needed to know in _what_ particular fashion he liked her and he'd be all set. ...Even if the answer was obvious to the part of himself that was honest.

The texture of the tunnel walls changed from dark and acid worn to white and smooth as he made it into a larger cavern, the incongruity snapping him from his thoughts. The two antlions skuttled around the entrance, as if they were afraid to enter or just expected him to turn around—a very bad feeling began to settle in his chest.

He flicked on his suit's flashlight to get a better look in the dim lighting, the different walls appearing to be part of some large outcropping in the center of the room. There were rolls of rock over its shape, a marble pattern that stretched up into the darkness of the ceiling. The material seemed almost translucent, actually, lines and shapes vaguely visible under the surface. Curiosity overwhelming his sense of caution, he reached out a gloved hand and pressed a palm over the strange substance.

It squished slightly.

…This was an organic structure.

The world around him rumbled and roared, and Gordon let out a soft growl.

This was why he didn't do stealth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one I finished (there's one other one but I won't post it on AO3). Lots of ideas got dropped by the wayside for this AU and a part of me is a little sad about that but not nearly enough to finish them.


End file.
